A Stab in the Dark

"It sounds like the truth."



"Just a few things left out is all. What I was saying, you won't get anything official out of it, but people around the department are gonna know better. You follow me?"



"So?"



"So you couldn't ask for a better passport back onto the force is what it sounds like to me. I was talking to Eddie Koehler over at the Sixth. You wouldn't have any trouble getting 'em to take you on again."



"It's not what I want."



"That's what he said you'd say. But are you sure it isn't? All right, you're a loner, you got a hard-on for the world, you hit this stuff-" he touched his glass "-a little harder than you maybe should. But you're a cop, Matt, and you didn't stop being one when you gave the badge back."



I thought for a moment, not to consider his proposal but to weigh the words of my reply. I said, "You're right, in a way. But in another way you're wrong, and I stopped being a cop before I handed in my shield."



"All because of that kid that died."



"Not just that." I shrugged. "People move and their lives change."



"Well," he said, and then he didn't say anything for a few minutes, and then we found something less unsettling to talk about. We discussed the impossibility of keeping three-card monte dealers off the street, given that the fine for the offense is seventy-five dollars and the profit somewhere between five hundred and a thousand dollars a day. "And there's this one judge," he said, "who told a whole string of them he'd let 'em off without a fine if they'd promise not to do it again. 'Oh, Ah promises, yo' honah.' To save seventy-five dollars, those assholes'd promise to grow hair on their tongues."



We had a third round of drinks, and I let him pay for that round, too, and then he went back to the station house and I caught a cab home. I checked the desk for messages, and when there weren't any I went around the corner to Armstrong's, and that's where it got to be a long night.



But it wasn't a bad one. I drank my bourbon in coffee, sipping it, making it last, and my mood didn't turn black or ugly. I talked to people intermittently but spent a lot of time replaying the day, listening to Havermeyer's explanation. Somewhere in the course of things I gave Jan a call to tell her how things had turned out. Her line was busy. Either she was talking to someone or she had the phone off the hook, and this time I didn't get the operator to find out which.



I had just the right amount to drink, for a change. Not so much that I blacked out and lost my memory. But enough to bring sleep without dreams.



BY the time I got down to Pine Street the next day, Charles London knew what to expect. The morning papers had the story. The line they carried was pretty much what I'd expected from what Fitzroy had said. I was mentioned by name as the fellow ex-cop who'd heard Havermeyer's confession and escorted him in so he could give himself up for the murder of Barbara Ettinger.



Even so, he didn't look thrilled to see me.



"I owe you an apology," he said. "I managed to become convinced that your investigations would only have a damaging effect upon a variety of people. I thought-"



"I know what you thought."



"It turned out that I was wrong. I'm still concerned about what might come out in a trial, but it doesn't look as though there will be a trial."



"You don't have to worry about what comes out anyway," I said. "Your daughter wasn't carrying a black baby." He looked as though he'd been slapped. "She was carrying her husband's baby. She may very well have been having an affair, probably in retaliation for her husband's behavior, but there's no evidence that it had an interracial element. That was an invention of your former son-in-law's."



"I see." He took his little walk to the window and made sure that the harbor was still out there. He turned to me and said, "At least this has turned out well, Mr. Scudder."



"Oh?"



"Barbara's killer has been brought to justice. I no longer have to worry who might have killed her, or why. Yes, I think we can say it's turned out well."



He could say it if he wanted. I wasn't sure that justice was what Burton Havermeyer had been brought to, or where his life would go from here. I wasn't sure where justice figured in the ordeal that was just beginning for Havermeyer's son and his blind ex-wife. And if London didn't have to worry that Douglas Ettinger had killed his daughter, what he'd learned about Ettinger's character couldn't have been monumentally reassuring.



I thought, too, of the fault lines I'd already detected in Ettinger's second marriage. I wondered how long the blonde with the sunny suburban face would hold her space in his desk-top photo cube. If they split, would he be able to go on working for his second father-in-law?



Finally, I thought how people could adjust to one reality after another if they put their minds to it. London had begun by believing that his daughter had been killed for no reason at all, and he'd adjusted to that. Then he came to believe that she had indeed been killed for a reason, and by someone who knew her well. And he'd set about adjusting to that. Now he knew that she'd been killed by a near-stranger for a reason that had nothing much to do with her. Her death had come in a dress rehearsal for murder, and in dying she'd preserved the life of the intended victim. You could see all that as part of some great design or you could see it as further proof that the world was mad, but either way it was a new reality to which he would surely adjust.



Before I left he gave me a check for a thousand dollars. A bonus, he said, and he assured me he wanted me to have it. I gave him no argument. When money comes with no strings on it, take it and put it in your pocket. I was still enough of a cop at heart to remember that much.



I tried Jan around lunchtime and there was no answer. I tried her again later in the afternoon and the line was busy three times running. It was around six when I finally reached her.



"You're hard to get hold of," I said.



"I was out some. And then I was on the phone."



"I was out some myself." I told her a lot of what had happened since I'd left her loft the previous afternoon, armed with the knowledge that Havermeyer's boy Danny had attended the Happy Hours Child Care Center. I told her why Barbara Ettinger had been killed, and I told her that Havermeyer's wife was blind.



"Jesus," she said.



We talked a little more, and I asked her what she was doing about dinner. "My client gave me a thousand dollars that I didn't do a thing to earn," I said, "and I feel a need to spend some of it frivolously before I piss the rest of it away on necessities."



"I'm afraid tonight's out," she said. "I was just making myself a salad."



"Well, do you want to hit a couple of high spots after you finish your salad? Any place but Blanche's Tavern is fine with me."



There was a pause. Then she said, "The thing is, Matthew, I have something on tonight."



"Oh."



"And it's not another date. I'm going to a meeting."



"A meeting?"



"An A.A. meeting."



"I see."



"I'm an alcoholic, Matthew. I've got to face the fact and I've got to deal with it."



"I didn't have the impression that you drank that much."



"It's not how much you drink. It's what it does to you. I have blackouts. I have personality changes. I tell myself I'm not going to drink and I do. I tell myself I'm going to have one drink and the next morning the bottle's empty. I'm an alcoholic."



"You were in A.A. before."



"That's right."



"I thought it didn't work for you."



"Oh, it was working fine. Until I drank. This time I want to give it a chance."



I thought for a minute. "Well, I think that's great," I said.



"You do?"



"Yes, I do," I said, and meant it. "I think it's terrific. I know it works for a lot of people and there's no reason why you can't make it work. You're going to a meeting tonight?"



"That's right. I was at one this afternoon."



"I thought they only had them at night."



"They have them all the time, and all over the city."



"How often do you have to go?"



"You don't have to do anything. They recommend ninety meetings in the first ninety days, but you can go to more. I have plenty of time. I can go to a lot of them."



"That's great."



"After the meeting this afternoon I was on the phone with somebody I knew when I was in the program last time. And I'm going to a meeting tonight, and that'll get me through today, and I'll have one day of sobriety."



"Uh-huh."



"That's how it's done, you see. You take it one day at a time."



"That's great." I wiped my forehead. It gets warm in a phone booth with the door closed. "When do those meetings end? Ten or ten thirty, something like that?"



"Ten o'clock."



"Well, suppose-"



"But people generally go out for coffee afterward."



"Uh-huh. Well, suppose I came by around eleven? Or later, if you figure you'll want to spend more than an hour over coffee."



"I don't think that's a very good idea, Matthew."



"Oh."



"I want to give this a fair shot. I don't want to start sabotaging myself before I even get started."



I said, "Jan? I wasn't planning to come over and drink with you."



"I know that."



"Or in front of you, as far as that goes. I won't drink when I'm with you. That's no problem."



"Because you can stop anytime you want to."



"I can certainly not drink when we're together."



Another pause, and when she spoke I could hear the strain in her voice. "God," she said. "Matthew, darling, it's not quite that simple."



"Oh?"



"One of the things they tell us is that we're powerless over people, places and things."



"I don't know what that means."



"It means to avoid those elements that can increase our desire to drink."



"And I'm one of those elements?"



"I'm afraid so."



I cracked the phone booth door, let a little air in. I said, "Well, what does that mean, exactly? That we never see each other again?"



"Oh, God."



"Just tell me the rules so I'll understand."



"Jesus, God. I can't think in terms of never again. I can't even think in terms of never having a drink again. I'm supposed to take it a day at a time, so let's do this in terms of today."



"You don't want to see me today."



"Of course I want to see you today! Oh, Jesus. Look, if you want to come over around eleven-"



"No," I said.



"What?"



"I said no. You were right the first time and I shouldn't be doing a number on you. I'm like my client, that's all. I've just got to adjust to a new reality. I think you're doing the right thing."



"Do you really?"



"Yes. And if I'm somebody you ought to stay away from, I think that's what you'd better do for the time being. And if we're supposed to get together later on, well, it'll happen."



A pause. Then, "Thank you, Matthew."



For what? I got out of the booth and went back upstairs to my room. I put on a clean shirt and tie and treated myself to a good steak dinner at the Slate. It's a hangout for cops from John Jay College and Midtown South, but I was lucky enough not to see anyone that I knew. I had a big meal all by myself, with a martini in front and a brandy afterward.